Navigation isn’t just a way for internet users to get around your site, or even for search engine spiders to crawl from page to page. Although a clear navigational structure is essential if you want your pages listed, your site’s navigation can be used for much more. It should be used to further link your keywords to your pages.

There are a number of ways that keywords can be linked in relevance to their appropriate pages, and factors off the page itself count for a great deal. Linking keywords through navigation is one of the best ways to manipulate those factors as a part of your SEO. In order to do this, you first have to ensure a few things.

Here are some of the steps that should be taken to optimise your navigation:

1. Convert any menus that are in non-search engine-friendly technologies. Web designers aren’t search engine optimisation professionals. They generally use whatever technology appeals to them at the time of building. This means that your navigation could be hidden in a menu designed with technology the search engines can’t view properly. Remove these menus or, if you’re particularly attached to them, provide a normal, plain menu as well somewhere on the page. The search engines claim to be able to cope better with things like Flash these days, but most SEO experts don’t trust them.

2. Convert image-based menus into text. Again, having your navigation based in something the search engines have trouble reading is not a good idea. If your site design relies on images as part of your page layout, either remove the link from within the image and place it in plain text above the image as navigation, or place a text-based navigation menu somewhere else on the page.

Wait – isn’t this taking all of the fun stuff out of your navigation? Removing fancy menus may make it sound like your pages are going to be bare and uninteresting, but it is important to make sure that the search engines can read your keyword-based links. The search engines tend to follow the first link they come across, so if your image-anchored links are at the top of your page, keyword relevance is missing. A search engine optimisation professional can give you some options for stylised navigation systems. Talk to our experts at SEO Consult Australia.

3. Embed links throughout the page. This is a fairly straightforward process: just find relevant keywords in your content, and use them as anchors for hyperlinks. Some search engine optimisation blogs have advised that site owners embed rollover-type links and other similarly half-cloaked links. This method is a fairly dubious one, and you should consult a professional before pursuing any cloaked links.

It should go without saying that hundreds of links are too much. If the page looks saturated with links, it’s likely to set off a search engine filter. Keep it as natural as possible.

4. Top it off with a site map. Linking every page to a site map ensures that search engines and human users can always find the pages they need.